Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty
space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless
and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the
Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain
only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination
of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]
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2007-07-23

Hospital Ranking

One big trouble with "League Tables" for schools, hospitals & so on, is that it seems that the result is often the exact opposite of what you'd think would be the useful purpose of having them.

My idea of that purpose is that "struggling" places should get extra resources, funding, and an examination of what can be done to improve them, e.g. by comparing their input, treatment (including the physical situation of the institution) & outcomes with "successful" ones.

Yet what seems to often happen is that the differences get worse, as the struggling places are penalised and the successful ones supported.